


With Love (From Me, to You)

by cagethesongbird



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Age Play, Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Carrying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Non-Sexual Age Play, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24635224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cagethesongbird/pseuds/cagethesongbird
Summary: Elliot has a hard session with Krista.Being Little helps him get through.
Relationships: Elliot Alderson & Tyrell Wellick, Elliot Alderson/Tyrell Wellick
Kudos: 53





	With Love (From Me, to You)

**Author's Note:**

> i've been listening to nothing but beatles lately, can ya tell? 
> 
> anyway, this was... some kind of emotional to write. i quite like how it came out, and i hope yall do too :)

_If there's anything that you want_   
_If there's anything I can do_   
_Just call on me, and I'll send it along_   
_With love, from me, to you_

The front door opens, then slams shut hard enough to rattle the pictures on the wall. Tyrell looks up, startled, and Flipper, predictably, goes crazy. The way she quiets when she gets to seeing who it is tells Tyrell it’s only Elliot, though.

“Hey, babe,” he calls, rising from the couch. He hits pause on whatever infomercial garbage was playing on the television, just in time to make out the unmistakable sound of sniffling.

He shifts into Caregiver Mode immediately – and yeah, sure, maybe he’ll feel bad about babying Elliot while he was Big, later. But right now, he’s needed, and a gentle voice and soft demeanor isn’t going to make the situation _worse._

“Hey,” he repeats carefully. Elliot, still holding his keys and cellphone, does not look Tyrell in the eyes.

His cheeks are pink with crying, which he was still in the midst of, and despite the way summer was creeping up on the city, has his black hoodie securely pulled over his ears. He’s stepped away from Tyrell and is very defensive in his stance, like he’s ready to fight – or simply expecting to be hit.

With his eyes still on Elliot, Tyrell tries to remember where he’d been, what he’d left so early in the morning for. He had to catch the train back to Manhattan, and… _oh, shit._

“Bad session with Krista, yes?” Tyrell’s words are soft, tentative. He is, without explicitly saying the words, allowing Elliot to fall apart.

And Elliot just _collapses,_ like he can’t bear to hold his own body up anymore. His keys and phone clatter loudly onto the hardwood as Tyrell dives in to catch him, and they half-tumble to the floor. Elliot sobs, quiet and mournful, the whole time. He flails weakly.

The first thing Tyrell wants to do is scream _what the fuck did she ask you,_ but that’s not his job – and he knows enough that he doesn’t want it to be.

If he meets Edward Alderson in Hell, they were most certainly having a fist fight. Latex gloves and all.

But in the present, at least, Tyrell knows it is not his task to poke at the wound. He must bandage it up, allow it time to heal. In his arms, Elliot is babbling things Tyrell can’t make out, incoherent in both speed and how low he’s muttering them.

“I can’t hear you, _sötnos,_ I’m so sorry,” Tyrell murmurs, and Elliot takes a great gasping sob, coughing on the come down.

Tyrell rubs his back, and after several seconds, Elliot manages to speak. He claws into Tyrell’s biceps hard enough to hurt, and his voice is terribly soft as he mutters something, sadly shaking his head.

“I... He.. hurt me, Tyrell. He hurt me.”

Tyrell stiffens, clutching Elliot to his chest. He’s pissed – in fact, he’s livid, but he of course has nowhere to put his grievances. Certainly not with Elliot, who is innocent in the matter.

Tyrell’s angry with, he supposes, the adults in Elliot’s life circa 1994 – parents, teachers, _his mother_ – who sat back and did nothing. They failed him.

Tyrell won’t make the same mistake.

“I know,” he murmurs, hugging Elliot a little harder. It’s all he can do. He has no justice – just lots of love. “I know, and I’m so sorry, my love.”

Elliot sobs. He holds tight to Tyrell, and he sobs. They sit there for a good long time, until Elliot cries himself out, tucks his thumb in his mouth, and rests his head against Tyrell’s chest. His eyes are half-closed, but he’s awake and breathing shallowly. His heart still skips a rabbit’s beat in his chest.

“Alright?” Tyrell asks softly, soothingly. He hasn’t stopped rubbing Elliot’s back.

It wasn’t – it certainly wasn’t, and they both know it. But Elliot had started breathing somewhat normally again, and Tyrell has learned to take his wins as they come.

Unfortunately, as Elliot shifts and begins to come back to himself, it becomes crystal-clear he’d wet himself sometime in the crying process. And though Tyrell doesn’t care, he knows it will only stand to upset Elliot further. He becomes acutely aware that it has to be dealt with, but intentionally doesn’t mention it.

Elliot just exhales shakily around his thumb, exhausted. He doesn’t feel as hollow as he did when he came in the door. His therapy session still needles in the back of his brain but, is slowly being overshadowed by the way he’s being held, and Tyrell’s protective blue-eyed gaze.

“I can’t get up like this,” Tyrell admits, pulling down Elliot’s hood. He’s sweating under his hairline, where his shaved hair is the thinnest. That’s unsurprising. Tyrell had been out in a thin t-shirt and had still ended up sweating – summer is fast approaching, and it’s going to be a hot one. He pets back the sweaty curls, pushing them from Elliot’s face.

Wide, wet green eyes gaze up at him. Tyrell wipes away a free-falling tear or two.

“Up?” Elliot lisps softly, helpful as always. He sucks anxiously on his fingertips, and Tyrell cringes. He had taken the train, hadn’t he? And probably hasn't washed his hands. Gross. 

And although the circumstances could have been better, Tyrell can’t help but smiling to himself, giving Elliot a comforting squeeze. He really does love doing this.

Elliot, who had once told Tyrell there was no one in the world that he truly trusted, had easily slid into the vulnerable mindset of a child. He was trusting Tyrell not to take advantage of him – and Tyrell took it very seriously. It was a privilege.

“If you could, yes,” Tyrell says, and Elliot gets unsteadily to his feet.

Tyrell is right up after him, easily lifting him into his arms. Elliot had seemingly been expecting this, and automatically wraps his legs around Tyrell’s middle, with no drama. And it was just as well: no one needed to be caught by surprise right now.

“Yuck,” Elliot mumbles into Tyrell’s shoulder. “’M wet.”

Tyrell holds back his ‘I know’, surprised. Elliot not-so-secretly hated the whole diapering aspect, and very rarely volunteered information like that. He supposed that means they were getting somewhere, in terms of relieving shame and guilt. Good.

“Are you, sweetheart?” he murmurs, and Elliot nods, sniffling. He’s shifted right from upset into clingy, burying his face into Tyrell’s shirt, rubbing his cheek against the cheap material, and nibbling at the pad of his thumb.

After months of trying, Elliot had finally gotten Tyrell on board with wearing t-shirts, much to his little counterpart’s relief. Much more comfortable on the face than the button-downs.

Tyrell strokes his hair, and Elliot lets out a pathetic little wail. Something beads down his cheek – Tyrell honestly can’t tell if it’s sweat, or tears. He makes a mental note to turn up the air conditioning.

“I know,” Tyrell croons. “If you just would let me go with you…”

And he knows it’s cheating to bring up Big issues when Elliot is so little, he _knows_.

He knows, and he feels like a cheat as soon as the sentence leaves his mouth. But he can’t help but feel like this could have been avoided, if Elliot weren’t so hellbent about his so-called independence.

Truthfully, Tyrell thought he was just trying to establish that he was still an adult. Tyrell knew that – he wasn’t going to force Elliot into anything, and he never would. Not his style, firstly.

But the point was, Elliot didn’t _need_ to attend his therapy sessions alone. He didn’t have to do anything alone anymore. To Tyrell, at least, that was the nature of a couple. Two – not one.

Elliot had other ideas, obviously.

Elliot didn’t want to fall into constantly needing to be looked after, because the point was, he was legally twenty-nine years old. He was grown. It didn’t matter how good it felt to put it all away – his childhood was over, in the most normal sense. He had to act like it, at least sometimes.

Elliot, currently very little, makes an unhappy noise.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Tyrell apologizes softly. “No grown-up stuff for now. You’re right.”

Elliot forgives him.

Tyrell shifts him so he’s easier to manage – into his arms completely, in a sort of modified bridal-carry. He can tell it’s going be one of those days where Elliot is _really_ young, and most likely, really quiet. He readies himself to keep up a one-sided conversation for the next while.

More often than not, Elliot fell into the range of a three or four-year-old, who needed a lot of help, but could do some small things for himself. Walk, talk, eat. But with the way he sinks into Tyrell, and that weepy expression that’s still plastered on his face – no. He’s not doing much for himself at the moment.

Elliot thinks Tyrell must have the patience of a saint, to put up with him like this. He’s still there – still knows what’s going on. He doesn’t forget, or anything like that. He’s himself, only much younger. Much less aware, much less paranoid.

Much less burdened.

He shifts, still wet and growing uncomfortable. Tyrell is murmuring to him – something about fixing him a bottle – but Elliot’s attention wanders quickly. He tunes back in, momentarily, only to catch Tyrell asking him if he’d like a bath.

Elliot freezes, and Tyrell freezes in turn. “What? What’s happened?”

Elliot doesn’t mean to – he’d hold it back if he could – but he begins hysterically weeping again. It’ll take Tyrell the rest of the evening to make the connection between bathing and the mini-panic attack, and when he does, he seriously considers contacting Sutherland and finding someone to beat the living shit out of.

“Okay! No bath, I’m sorry,” Tyrell frantically tries to repair the situation. Elliot weeps, holding Tyrell’s shirt in weak hands.

Elliot weeps, and doesn’t stop weeping, even when Flipper joins him on the bed to lap at his cheeks.

“No, doggie,” he wails, not liking the feeling of her cold nose. Tyrell shoos the dog away.

_Sorry, Flip,_ Elliot thinks, watching her haughtily march away. _Not right now._

Tyrell is unsure how to address this. Elliot needed to be changed – his jeans were already damp, and it wasn’t going to get better as time wore on. Thing was, he was so touchy, who knew what else would set him off?

Elliot whimpers – oh, and, yeah. It probably wasn’t the most comfortable to be sitting in pissy denim, either.

“Okay,” Tyrell resolves, quickly assessing the situation. He’s speaking more to himself than to Elliot, whose eyes eventually wander to the ceiling above. He still sheds a few tears every now and again, but he’s calming down. Tyrell wonders if it’ll last, this time.

He’d learned that, no matter the size of your baby, caretaking could be a difficult task.

Distraction was key, here, he surmises. With his ears open for Elliot, Tyrell pulls a basket out from under the bed – just one of the many they kept for such occasions as this. That cat stuffed animal Elliot really liked was there, and a small collection of pacifiers.

“Hey.” Tyrell’s voice is soft, but Elliot is jumpy. He startles, and almost looks like he wants to start crying again.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he soothes, and Elliot, blessedly, relaxes. “Pacifier?”

_That’s_ the magic word. Once that bad boy is secured in Elliot’s mouth, everything else is a breeze. Tyrell cleans his face with a cool washcloth, and scrubs baby wipes over everything else. Not an alternative to bathing, no, but the best he could do, considering. It would work.

Elliot is patient with him, does not struggle or fight, generally happy to sit back with his binky and observe. He was content, usually, which is why his outburst freaked the shit out of Tyrell. He would only cry like that if something was seriously wrong, and it scared Tyrell deeply to dwell on that for too long.

They were figuring it out, he reminds himself firmly. They would be okay.

_Elliot_ would be okay. He always was – because he was a trooper. He wanted to be okay, he wanted to get better, which was more than some could say. It counted for a whole hell of a lot, even if he stumbled.

“’Rell,” Elliot murmurs, slurred behind the half-removed pacifier. He sniffles faintly. “Um.”

“I know, you’re still wet. I’ll hurry up,” Tyrell replies, smoothing his palm over Elliot’s stomach. “Did you even eat today? Hm?”

Elliot makes a fussy sound in response, wriggling in place. No, he hadn’t yet eaten today. Oops.

True to his word, Tyrell runs through the rest of the ritual quickly. He’s gotten pretty good at it, too.

You don’t expect it to be hard to dress someone else – you expect it to be just like dressing yourself. But you’d be wrong.

No, it’s a completely different ballgame, with a whole new set of rules. Especially if you happened to be dressing someone as touch sensitive as Elliot.

Tyrell has learned to move quickly, lest something get snagged, or pulled, or feel in any way strange, and Elliot happened to burst into tears. It was like a game of Jenga – what piece toppled the tower was up to Tyrell.

Despite the struggle, it is relaxing. Elliot’s needs were really so few – even though he thought he was the worst burden to grace planet earth – and Tyrell enjoyed being able to satisfy them. He felt needed, and it was a good feeling.

Once dressed and diapered, Elliot sits up. He holds his arms out expectantly.

“Hug,” he says softly, momentarily unhooking himself from his binky.

Tyrell smiles and scoops him up immediately. “Of course.”

Elliot holds on tight, and sighs. He doesn’t say much else, as he's tired, and mostly occupied with the pacifier. The sound it makes in his mouth is strangely soothing, as much to Tyrell as it is to him.

Tyrell holds him, and he knows, suddenly and absolutely, that they’ll be okay. Despite the bumps and bruises along the way.


End file.
